Concept
Possible world
Overview
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that there are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that alternate realities do not exist.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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with the kinds of propositions that may occur, with the various types of facts, and with the classification of the constituents of facts. In this way logic provides an inventory of possibilities, a repertory of abstractly tenable hypotheses.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Close in meaning to Possible world; the term itself is not named.
It is not easy to deny that there is a world of ideas or of meanings, which simply consists in that identical reference of symbols by which mutual understanding between rational beings is made possible. A _mere_ suggestion, a _mere_ question, a _mere_ negation, seem all of them to imply that we sometimes _entertain_ ideas without affirming them of reality, and therefore without affirming their reference to be a…
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
Close in meaning to Possible world; the term itself is not named.
Neither of them asserts propositions which, like those of history and geography, depend upon the actual concrete facts being just what they are. We may illustrate this characteristic by means of Leibniz's conception of many _possible_ worlds, of which one only is _actual_. In all the many possible worlds, philosophy and mathematics will be the same; the differences will only be in respect of those particular facts…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
Names Possible world several times.
Philosophers who discussed Possible world
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- David Kaplan (philosopher)
- Robert Merrihew Adams
- David Chalmers
- Robert Nozick
- David Lewis (philosopher)
- Robert Stalnaker
- C. I. Lewis
- Saul Kripke
- Rudolf Carnap
- Charles Sanders Peirce
- William Lycan
- Terence Parsons
- Nathan Salmón
- Alexander Pruss
Related ideas
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Philosophy
- Al-Ghazali
- Modal realism
- Contingency (philosophy)
- Metaphysics
- The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Natural language
- Ontology
- Best of all possible worlds
- Linguistics
- Philosophy of religion
- Physicalism
- René Descartes
- Ontological argument
- Truth
- Problem of evil
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- Modal logic
- Willard Van Orman Quine
- Duns Scotus
- Supervenience
- David Lewis (philosopher)
- Logical truth
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Absurdism.